Supreme opinions

Well, the supreme court should now be off deliberating on, amongst other things, the health care omnibus, in particular, the mandate that people buy insurance. One issue that was raised before it went to them was that one of the justices (I think Sotomayor), at the time that the law was being debated, said that it really needed to be passed. A second thing that I haven't heard mentioned is that years and years ago, when still semi-new to the court, Justice Ginsberg stated that she believed that the constitution should provide a right to health care. I almost started a column then (blogs didn't really exist yet), titled "Things that pissed me off this week", with that as the headliner. The beauty of the constitution is how vague it is, and when specific, it is specific in limiting the powers of the government. If the US government were specifically tasked with providing something to the citizenry, I fear that it would be a disaster, as a comprehensive statement of what is to be provided would be ridiculously long and complex (just like Obamacare), and almost immediately be outdated by advances. A simple statement would never be cleanly interpreted. At the time, I thought that Ginsberg's statement showed a very poor comprehension of the purpose of the constitution, and time has not changed my opinion of that.

On a similar, but different note, the "Marriage Amendment" is coming up for a vote in NC soon. I don't know how I really feel about gay marriage, but I know how I feel about amending the state constitution in order to monkey with the rights of the citizens. That's a no-brainer right there. In a letter from September 2011, William Barber, of the local NAACP essentially made that same statement. He buried it in multiple pages of rhetoric in which he got into the history of civil rights, how people have been trampled on before, etc. However, only one thing really matters, you don't use the constitution to step on somebody. As the Adaptive Curmudgeon said, stop and think about how your worst enemy could use it, before you pass it. And as someone else I know said, "If they'll do it for you, they'll do it to you."

And finally, once upon a time, representatives debated the constitutionality of a law BEFORE they voted on it. They didn't pass it, saying they would leave it to the courts to decide. That attitude is laziness, incompetence, and dereliction of duty.